
LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. ,^^ .LI3.k_^^ 

Shelf t As 

1 ■^ ^ (^ 

UNITED STATES OF AIVIERJCA. 



The Public and Social Duties 



College Graduate 



AN ADDRESS 



DKI.IVEUEII BEFORE 



The Alumni of Brown University, 



COMMENCEMENT, 1880, 



Hon. Edward L. Pierce. 






ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



Alumni of Brown University, 



TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1880, 



HON. EDWARD 1>. PIERCE. 



POEM 



REV. S. F. SMITH., D D. 



188C 



PROVIDENCE : 
SIDNEY S. RIDER 

1880. 



rv. 



Ljic. 






At a meeting of the Alumni of Brown University, lield in tlie Chapel 
of Manning Hall on Tuesday, June 15, 1880, it was 

Voted, That the thanks of this Association be tendered to the Hon. 
Edwakd L. Pikrce for the able, eloquent, and appropriate Address 
delivered by him before the Alumni this day; also to the Rev. Samuel 
F. Smith, D. 1) , for his excellent poem; and that the Secretary be 
directed to request copies of the same for publication. 

Attest:— 

Kkuben a. Gi'ii-D, 

Secreiartj. 



ADDRESS 



This is the festival season of culture. On these 
fair days of June scholars come as pilgrims to seats of 
learning, and youths go forth from them to assume the 
duties and responsibilities of men. Few spectacles in 
human life attract sympathies so genuine and universal. 
If our hearts are rightly attuned we cannot fail to enter 
into the spirit of occasions in which worldliness yields 
to primal instincts. The traveller, in a foreign city, 
pauses by the wayside as teachers and pupils celebrate 
some holiday with songs and banners, or children in 
white array go to their first communion, or bride and 
bridegroom, with the loving escort of kinsfolk and 
neighbors, enter the cathedral to receive the consecra- 
tion of their vows. Speaking another language, and 
kneeling at other altars, they are for the time of his 
kindred and family, and he blesses theai with a stran- 
ger's benediction. 



In a like scene, to which all hearts are responsive, 
we have met again to participate. Nearly three-score 
young- men, equipped for active life, go forth from the 
University to enter on the work which God shall ap- 
point unto each to do. Father, mother, sister, brother, 
are to rejoice in the growing promise of one on whom 
their hope has centred. The ingenuous youth himself 
is to see visions of the future as it offers duties, honors, 
rewards. We as spectators, in sober thought, shall 
contemplate the possibilities of each as he comes upon 
this platform where once we have stood, and shall ask 
what will he do with the training, the acquirements, and 
the inspiration of his college life ^ 

I esteem it a privilege to stand before you to-day, 
looking into the faces of early companions ; in a church 
where holy men, no longer in mortal flesh, my guides 
and friends, — Granger, AVayland, Caswell, — still speak 
in their remembered ministrations ; in a city beautiful for 
situation, to which I am bound by ties far tenderer than 
those of any academic fellowship ; and, what most con- 
cerns the hour, in the presence of young men who are 
passing from the seclusion of the college to the activi- 
ties of the world. You will not be vexed this morning 
with any old question of literature or history, or with 
any speculations of science ; but the occasion in which 
we join, and the period in which we live, shall suggest 
my theme : — 



THE PUBLIC AND SOCIAL DUTIES OF THE COLLEGE 
GRADUATE. 

It would add to the value of our statistical tables if 
they informed us with substantial accuracy how many 
students are now in institutions which may fairly be 
called colleges according to the American standard, 
and how many receive degrees from them each year; 
what is the total number of such graduates in the coun- 
try, and how they are distributed among the various 
professions ; but however unsatisfactory the attainable 
figures may be, all will agree that the college graduates 
living at any period ought to be a prodigious force in 
the direction of public opinion. 

Without refining upon the purpose of the college 
curriculum, it is enough to say that it is arranged pri- 
marily for the discipline of the whole man, his intellec- 
tual and his moral nature; and secondarily for the acqui- 
sition of the elements of knowledge in as many depart- 
ments as time permits, so that thereafter, by himself or 
under specialists, the student may pursue any one accord- 
ing to his taste and aptitude. It puts in complete work- 
ing order the noblest machine in the universe, and 
starts it off to become the greatest of dynamic agencies 
for good or for evil. With it ought to come a clear per- 
ception of truth in the various human relations, and a 
facility for impressing that truth on others. The studies 



are not confined to one specialty or group, but are com- 
prehensive. They deal with the intellectual and moral 
nature, with the best thoughts of antiquity, with the 
material world, with what is taught by science in its 
manifold divisions, and with what has transpired in 
human history. If one study followed exclusively tends 
to disturb a normal development, this curriculum, so 
broad and inclusive, awakens the whole soul, and teaches 
truth not as an absolute entity alone, but in its many 
relations. This is what Milton describes when he says: 
"I call, therefore, a complete and generous education 
that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and 
magnanimously all the ofl&ces, both private and public, 
of peace and war." 

The College does more than't^rain faculties and teach 
elements. This may be done under private tutorship 
or in a lecture-room, without association among stu- 
dents, or between students and professors. The College 
is a society. It is a society founded for a noble pur- 
pose, rich in the implements of culture, hallowed by 
the devotion of its benefactors, glorious often by what 
it has done for mankind. As such a society, it forms, 
directs, and inspires its successive generations of stu- 
dents. 

The college student is for four years set apart from 
mankind. He is here at a period when the soul is 
sensitive to all impressions, when the character takes 
its direction. He comes as a boy : he leaves as a man. 



The world he enters is unlike that which for a time 
has cloged to him. They have points of comparison, 
but their points of contrast are many and striking. 
Outside is the conflict of material interests, the classifi- 
cation of men with reference to wealth or worldly suc- 
cess, the subordination of the better impulses to the 
lower, the pressure of expediency against duty, the 
assertion and practice of a conventional morality in 
politics and trade, which sneers at the highest rectitude 
as sentimental and pharisaic. There, too, are the fierce 
competitions for place, the war cries of pai^ties which 
no longer signify living issues, and the fever of specu- 
lation, with its curious periodicity of return. 

From all this the college student is withdra\tn. He 
is indeed born and remains with like passions as the 
rest of us, but his time has not yet come. If the noise 
without reaches him, he is undisturbed, for he listens 
rather to the calm voices of teachers and books. If, 
from his chamber window, he has a glimpse of human 
activities, he sees them only as spectator and critic. 
If public journals and partisans condone corruption and 
duplicity in high places, or are subservient to clamor, 
or are always dinning in our ears that it is the highest 
duty of a citizen to sustain party nominations however 
objectionable, he turns for instruction to moralists like 
AVayland, and to publicists like Lieber and Woolsey. 
Whatever outlook he may have, he is in personal inter- 
est and activity isolated from the world beyond. His 



stand is at a point where all finer influences meet. He 
is of a commonwealth typical in some respects of the 
outer life, but separate and apart from it. He lives in 
a community where knowledge is the pursuit of all ; 
where the atmosphere is charged with an inspiring and 
vitalizing force ; where rank among his fellows depends 
not on birth or wealth, but on generosity, true manli- 
ness, and achievements of intellectual power ; where 
pretension and genuine character are readily and 
almost always justly assorted; where his immediate 
examplars are students already distinguished by promise 
and attainment, and professors of finished culture and 
unworldly lives. He holds converse all the while with 
the great masters of thought in every age, and in their 
presence discerns what is transient and what is endur- 
ing. With each visit to the library, he sees at every 
turn of the eye what names live and what soon perish. 
He tests in the class-room and in the solitude of his 
study the relations of things by eternal standards ; and 
there he learns from constant iteration and reflection 
the supreme value of the individual soul, surviving 
societies, institutions, governments, — its right of private 
judgment superior to the authority of Church and State ; 
its perpetual obHgations to truth and duty with no 
exceptions for exigencies and crises, personal or public. 
Moral philosophy teaches the supremacy of conscience ; 
mental philosophy affirms the right to think for one's 
self as the foundation of intellectual life ; and history 



teaches how posterity reserves its garlands for those 
only who maintained in lives of thought or action the 
courage of their convictions. The College, then, in all 
her nurture, from the hour when she calls the youth to 
herself to the hour when she bids him go forth to his 
work, helps him to see truth as it is, to live it among 
men, and to maintain a vigorous personality in the 
strong currents of society. 

This individuality, which is essential to manhood 
and to all good work in the world, is not to be con- 
founded with self-assertion, irreverence, or eccentricity, 
— opposite vices which college discipline tends to coun- 
teract. The true scholar is in a sense the citizen of- all 
nations, the contemporary of all ages. He has an open 
ear for the according voices of his own generation, and 
for the wisdom of the past. In his own judgments he 
will take account of the consensus of living men, and 
respect custom and tradition. 

" Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast ! 
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art, 
If with dry eye and cold, unloving heart, 
Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of the Past, 
By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind 
To all the beauty, power, and truth behind." 

What place, then, is so adapted as the College to 
form and solidify a manly character, to promote fearless 
inquiry and independent conviction, to encourage the 
pursuit of lofty ideals, to put in true perspective all the 

2 



10 



prizes of ambition ? Where else shall we send the 
youth of our country with equal hope that they will 
come forth to be contented with moderate gains in the 
midst of speculation ; to live frugally in the midst of 
extravagance ; to assert the right of private judguient 
against authority ; to carry a clear head and a strong 
will in all periods of frenzy and delusion ; and to 
plant a firm foot against organized bodies which would 
usurp individual responsibility? I answer with confi- 
dence, that there is no such school of manhood as the 
College. Thousands may fail to learn the lesson, to 
realize the ideal ; but they, not the College, are at fault. 
So true is it what Wordsworth says, that it is 

" — the most difficult of tasks to A-eep 
Heights which the soul is competent to gain." 

Nor does the power of the College over us end when 
our names drop from its annual catalogue. Each one 
remains accountable to teachers and classmates and 
contemporary students, and he never can escape from 
their moral jurisdiction. Can any one of that famous 
class of 18*29 at Cambridge, which enrolls men preemi- 
nent in science, literature, jurisprudence, and theology, 
— and among them the author of " My country, 'tis of 
thee," who to-day serves us as poet, — ever emancipate 
himself from the dominion of such a fellowship ? Can a 
pupil of Wayland, Hopkins, Porter, Robinson, when med- 
itating an act of meanness or dishonor, fail to hear the 



11 



upbraiding voice of the good President, living or dead, 
at whose feet he was nurtured ^ Can I, when a choice 
of conduct is before me, one offering the rewards of 
duty and the other worldly temptations, be blind to the 
presence of my college teachers, four of whom survive,^ 
— three living in Providence, and one, my cherished 
friend from college days, the Latin professor, who is still 
at his ancient post] And shall I not then also see 
about me as witnesses and judges, contemporary stu- 
dents of my own and other classes, — my classmate and 
chum 5^ who, after faithful service in a metropolitan pul- 
pit, now holds a chair at Princeton ; an alumnus of an 
earlier class,^ now a Professor at Yale, whose treatment 
of Christian history at its beginning and in later times 
has done so much to establish an intelligent faith ; an 
alumnus of a later class,* distinguished by his culture 
and historical studies, now the Professor of History in 
this college ; two members of another class, — one,^ the 
President of Michigan University, who has recently 
been appointed the chief of an embassy to China, 
sent to adjust the relation of that Oriental Power with 
Western civilization ; and the other,*' by whose immedi- 
ate invitation I am here to-day, a civilian honored for 
many years with an important trust from the national 
government, and a soldier who signalized his patriotism 



1. Professors Chace, Gammcll, Lincoln, Boise. 4. Rev. J. Lewis Diman. 

2. Rev. James O. Murray. 5. Hon. James B. Angell. 

3. Rev. George P. Fisher. 6. Gen. A. B. Underwood. 



12 

on fields of battle, and whose person bears the perpetual 
seal of h 
hatchie ? 



seal of his heroism amid the blazing columns of Wau 



Will it be said that I have given an ideal picture 
of what the College ought to do for a man, rather than 
a statement of what it does ? I answer, No ! AVbere- 
ever public spirit, loyalty to conviction, resistance to 
clamor, perseverance in good causes amid discourage- 
ments, the patient endurance of hardships, and courage 
without fear of death have been manifested, there the 
college graduate has been conspicuous. You will iind 
him at the missionary station most remote from civiliza- 
tion, careless of discomforts, facing even martyrdom, — 
as witness the career of John Coleridge Patteson, a stu- 
dent and fellow at Oxford, uniting in his blood and 
name two families distinguished in the judicial history 
of England. In our civil war no class gave a readier 
response to the summons of patriotism than college 
men ; none were more quick to enroll themselves in the 
military service than the students and younger members 
of the alumni. Their proportionate contribution was, 
according to statistics collected with care, larger than 
that made by the public generally. The New England 
colleges sent nearly a quarter of their students and 
graduates of military age into the service. In some 
colleges of Pennsylvania and the West the Commence- 
ment vvas given up, the whole graduating class having 



13 



volunteered. Oberlin is said to have sent seven hun- 
dred of her students and ahimni to the field, of whom 
one hundred gave their lives. But what the college 
men did for their country in that hour of peril cannot 
be measured by numbers alone. The example of each 
was in itself a power, a reinforcement. That nation is 
safe when its highest and best are foremost in self- 
abnegation. Who could look on their manly forms, 
often more beautiful than that which ancient art chis- 
elled in the Antinous — their eyes beaming with intelli- 
gence and lofty spirit ; who could see them leaving 
homes of refinement and opening careers to undergo 
the hardships of camp and march, to suffer weary 
months in hospitals and die on battlefields, — who could 
behold that spectacle, and not feel assured that all 
would be well with a country whose educated youth 
were such as these ? Where in ancient or modern 
times have there been sublimer scenes than were wit- 
nessed after the war on commemorative occasions at our 
colleges, when, amid battle flags and trophies and 
shields bearing the names of the fallen, scarred veterans 
were received, not with a Roman, but with a Christian 
triumph'? Is there in ours, or any land, a more impres- 
sive structure than the Memorial Hall at Cambridge, on 
whose walls Harvard has carved with classic tributes 
the names of her patriot dead 1 Where in ages to come 
shall mankind turn for more inspiring examples than 
are found in the volumes in which the colleges have 



14 



preserved with loving care the heroism of their sons ? 
If it shall be said that culture alienates from common 
interests and sympathies ; that the College, while it 
drills the intellect and gives an aesthetic direction to the 
faculties, fails to ennoble character, — our civil war 
with its histories, its biographies, and its monuments 
will be a final answer. 

If the College has done less than it should have for 
the improvement of American politics, it has in emi- 
nent examples shown what it can accomplish in that 
direction. The active participation, within the last few 
years, of young men, largely recent graduates of col- 
leges, in the movement to purify and improve civil 
administration, and to test public men by severer 
standards than before, is the most hopeful sign of 
contemporary politics. As typical of this class I men- 
tion Henry Armitt Brown, of Philadelphia, whose 
beautiful life and character Professor Hoppin has put 
in a volume destined, I trust, to assist in moulding gen- 
erations of young men. A student at Yale, he was a 
true collegian, fair in scholarship, a diligent reader, pre- 
serving his purity, active in college sports, always fore- 
most in song, poem, and speech. Qualifying himself 
for the bar, and enriching his culture with foreign 
travel, he entered on active life with a serious purpose. 
He cultivated the art of public speaking, and pursued 
the studies which are combined in all finished statesmen, 
— history, the classics, the masterpieces of great ora- 



15 



tors, public law, political economy, and the industrial 
and social questions of the time. The civil war and 
the period of reconstruction had passed when he took 
his place on the platform, but he found field enough for 
his powers. He assailed corruption in municipal gov- 
ernment, entered actively into political campaigns, ad- 
dressing immense audiences, and pleading always for 
higher policies in finance and civil administration. He 
came to the platform at the centennial epoch, and in 
orations upon our early and revolutionary history he 
was accurate in details, picturesque in narrative, ele- 
vating in tone, solemn in purpose. Compare him with 
the public men who now hold or for many years have 
held the foremost places in his State, and it is refresh- 
ing to see what this gifted young man had simply as a 
citizen accomplished at thirty-three. 

The training of the College imposes duties various 
and comprehensive. Culture must not end in itself; 
if it does, it becomes that " fugitive and cloistered vir- 
tue " which Milton refused to praise. In order to 
deserve divine approval and win human favor, it must 
not live apart from men, contemplating its own beauty 
and perfection. It must diffuse sweetness and light as 
well as have them. The scholar's sphere will always 
be larger than himself, his family, and his business. 
He is a patriot ; and he will strive to purify public life,, 
to ennoble the national spirit. He is a townsman ;, 



16 



and he will take part in efforts to promote public edu- 
cation and health, honesty and economy in municipal 
administration; and he will not think it beneath his dig- 
nity to serve in any official capacity, — selectman, over- 
seer of the poor, or member of the school committee. 
He is a neighbor ; and he will without pretension dif- 
fuse about him by example and word the spirit and 
knowledge with which the College has endowed him. 
He will take time for conversation, for personal inter- 
course with all sorts and conditions of men. The dif- 
ference between communities as places in which to live 
and to hold real estate, depends often not so much on a 
fortunate site, and facilities of communication, as upon 
the quality of the prominent citizens who give the tone 
to its civic life. 

The College will have a closer connection with the 
world, and will have a greater power over men when it 
ceases to be regarded chiefly as a preparatory school for 
what are called the learned professions. When its 
graduates are distributed among farmers, tradesmen, 
and mechanics, they will no longer appear to the gener- 
ality as a sedentary class, reposing under grateful shades 
while the multitude are toiling in the heat, visionary 
while the rest are practical, a privileged body placed 
above the common lot. It is an auspicious sign that 
the stream which flows from the college is now spread- 
ing fertility into new flelds. The alumnus is not only 



17 



a minister, lawyer, physician, teacher ; he is also a civil 
engineer, manufacturer, merchant, farmer, artisan. 
Among the founders of a new town in Colorado a few 
years ago were twenty college men. A gentleman, 
once a professor of this college, and afterwards the 
manager of a large mining establishment in that State,^ 
became by his public spirit its first citizen, and then its 
representative in the Senate of the United States. 

I venture in this presence to suggest — what may 
seem heresy to some — that there is a tendency in our 
country to overvalue what is called " higher education," 
at least as compared with certain homely virtues on 
which the family and society depend, — industry, con- 
tentment, fixedness in home and pursuit. Our high 
schools are multiplying the number of young men and 
women who turn from farm, mechanical, and domestic 
work, and apply for employment as clerks and scrive- 
ners. The trained nurse, how hard to find ! but copy- 
ists, what legions of them of both sexes are always 
waiting to serve you ! Even our reform-schools press 
their inmates to a point of intellectual excitement so 
far above their moral development that upon their dis- 
charge they treat as beneath them farm or domestic 
drudgery. This tendency is more marked with us than 
in any other country. It exists, however, elsewhere, as 
in Greece, where the University is regarded by some as 
an obstacle to material progress. It results there in a 

1. Hon. N. p. Hill. 



18 



dearth of men fitted for surveying, mining, road- making, 
bridge-building, and farming ; Avhile there is a superflu- 
ous number of lawyers, doctors, and clerks, who, hav- 
ing no chance of a career, become idle, restless agita- 
tors. Are not the leaders in our educational movements 
responsible in some measure for that disgust with man- 
ual labor, — for that mischievous notion that it is a mis- 
fortune, even a dishonor, to have to work for one's liv- 
ing on the farm, in the factory, or in domestic service, 
— which underlies the dangerous movements of our 
time, and finally assails social order, as in the municipal 
elections of San Francisco and the riots of Pittsburg ? 
That civilization is not healthy which divorces the train- 
ing of the intellect from the labor of the hands ; and 
that personal culture is defective in which these cun- 
ning fingers, these powerful muscles, these stalwart 
limbs are left altogether unexercised in productive 
industry. At least as a recreation manual labor helps 
to maintain the tone of the intellectual life, as eminent 
examples bear witness. Some of us remember Dr. 
Wayland, hoe in hand, crossing the college yard of 
a summer morning to work in his garden, near where 
the Memorial Hall now stands ; and the present British 
Prime Minister is said to be the best woodchopper in 
the three kingdoms. 

The proportion of graduates whose inherited for- 
tunes place them above the necessity of relying upon 



19 



their earnings for support has increased with the grow- 
ing wealth of the country. It is not well for such to 
compete for clients and patrons in professions already 
overcrowded ; but nevertheless they owe a large duty 
to society. They ought not, as too many of them do, 
to lead aimless lives, keeping apart from men, fre- 
quenting clubs, travelling in Europe, lounging at water- 
ing places, or, at the best, amateuring in art or books. 
As Lord Bacon has nobly said, " In the theatre of 
human life it is only for God and angels to be specta- 
tors." Society has many offices of beneficence which 
should be filled by men instructed in the best knowledge 
of their time, and placed by exceptional circumstances 
above the temptations which beset a struggling life. 
There is a vast amount of unremunerative work to be 
done, — for the relief of pauperism, the care of the pub- 
lic health, the support of education, the working of 
municipal government, the management of prisons and 
hospitals, the administration of charities and savings 
banks, the protection of the Indian, the freedman, 
and the emigrant ; but when such honorable though 
gratuitous service is offered, it is too often declined by 
persons of elegant leisure, and finally falls upon more 
earnest men, already overworked in their professions. 
Noblesse oblige applies to all fortunate classes ; and cul- 
ture combined with wealth ought to do in a republic 
what it has been claimed aristocracy has done as a 
privileged order. 



20 



Educated men sometimes complain that a political 
career in this country is closed to a gentleman, and open 
only to men of coarse and pushing energy. If there 
be anything in this, they who complain are often in a 
measure responsible for the exclusion. No man has a 
right to expect the confidence and favor of constituen- 
cies until he has shown capacity for affairs and an 
active interest in the public welfare. An English 
writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, has said that " the active 
exercise of politics requires common sense, sympathy, 
trust, resolution, and enthusiasm, — qualities which your 
man of culture has carefully rooted up, lest they dam- 
age the delicacy of his critical olfactories." 

Here, then, in the spheres I have named, the way 
opens for educated men of wealth to careers of useful- 
ness and honor. The transition from such beneficent 
service to public life is natural ; but what if it does not 
take place ? The best public work of our day is done 
outside of legislative bodies, — in thoughtful discussions 
by specialists, and by charitable, business, and scientific 
commissions, which mature conclusions and frame stat- 
utes. Lord Brougham in his final estimate of Canning 
mentions as his greatest defect that he had reasoned 
himself into the belief, which he was wont to profess, 
that no man can serve his country with effect out of 
office, as if there were no public, no forum, no press, — 
the most pernicious notion which, in his opinion, ever 
entered into the mind of a public man. 



21 



Oar educated young men, who are placed above the 
necessity of constant service in a profession, may learn 
a lesson from English history. How is it that the 
English nobility has survived the wreck which has 
befallen similar orders elsewhere in Europe, so that it 
continues to furnish popular statesmen, and no candi- 
date for the House of Commons so attracts constituen- 
cies as the son of a peer ] It is because at all periods 
many of them have been distinguished by beneficent 
activities. They have not been idlers ; they have writ- 
ten histories, translated the classics, cultivated science, 
trained themselves in the art of public speaking, led 
in movements for moral and physical amelioration, 
and have in some measure preserved the best idea of 
feudalism, — the duty which superior privilege owes to 
inferior fortune. They perform common labors, fill 
important trusts, and administer charities without com- 
pensation. They are represented in every unpaid par- 
liamentary or social investigation, and they sit in local 
tribunals without salary or fees. Lord Wharnclifi'e, 
grandfather of the present peer, presided for more than 
thirty years at the Quarter Sessions in Sheffield, dis- 
charging the duty gratuitously and in a manner to dis- 
tinguish himself among English magistrates. How 
many wealthy graduates of American colleges would be 
willing to serve without compensation as justices of the 
peace and police judges ? 



22 



The relation of the college graduate to politics 
presses upon our attention to-day. Literary men have 
too much the habit of treating political duty in the 
spirit of triflers, and they have often only a smile, if 
not a sneer, for others who busy themselves to save the 
State from a disastrous policy or from unworthy public 
men. But can any conduct be more irrational ? Poli- 
tics is the science of government ; it relates in one way 
or another to all that concerns organized society. And 
can there be any nobler pursuit ? It is the theme and 
title of a treatise of Aristotle who ruled philosophy for 
eighteen centuries, and who did not think the subject 
unworthy of his thought. Mr. Gladstone has been a 
politician for fifty years, and where will you find a finer 
type of manhood than in him ? You will indeed meet 
with ignoble passions in political parties ; but you wall 
meet with these in all human activities, even in relig- 
ious movements. But however repelling some aspects 
of contemporary politics may be, the good citizen is 
bound to do his best to improve them ; and the ampler 
his training and opportunities, the more peremptory is 
this obligation. 

The college graduate should in his political action 
maintain the manly spirit which is the natural growth 
of his training ; and this quality was never so much 
needed as now in American politics. The existence of 
political parties, and the divisions of citizens among 
them according to their opinions, interests, traditions, 



23 



or temperament, seem inseparable from a free common 
wealth. Mr. Burke, in his " Thoughts on the Cause 
of the Present Discontents," has stated with his ac- 
customed force the duty of political association, and 
the unhappy and even unpatriotic position of " de- 
tached " gentlemen who hold themselves aloof from it. 
The duty of good men to associate when the bad com- 
bine ; the necessity of organization for promoting any 
policy in government ; the impotence of men who cul- 
tivate an austere individuality, — all this may be admit- 
ted. Some mode also for collecting the general sense 
of voters of the same party for the purpose of concert 
in the support of candidates by means of a preliminary 
conference or expressions of opinion, seems convenient 
and reasonable. 

There are, however, existing conditions in American 
politics which require the citizen to watch jealously the 
limitations of party allegiance. A machine has been 
created, beginning with the primary meeting and 
ascending to State and national organizations, which 
becomes at times an intolerable tyranny. Adopting the 
scandalous war cry, "To the victors belong the spoils,'" 
it rules by addressing the lowest passions. The caucus,, 
managed by experts, instead of expressing the popular 
sense is as likely to express only the command of some 
partisan chief. Two or three public men, with no rec- 
ords of meritorious service, by arts unworthy of states- 
men and of honest men, are able to override the wishes- 



24 



of the constituent body, and to defy the moral sense of 
the people. They are, in their field, stronger than 
churches, colleges, and public journals combined, — 
though at times foiled by some happy turn of events 
which gives to the party a candidate worthy, by his cul- 
ture, his character, and his blameless record, of the 
honorable title of statesman. They set themselves 
against an improved civil service, and checkmate and 
thrust at a President who would make the reform 
" thorough, radical, and complete." This system of dic- 
tation by unscrupulous partisan leaders, with a body of 
henchmen at their backs, is perverting our elections 
from a conflict of principles to a struggle of placemen ; 
is destroying statesmanship and corrupting the sources 
of national life. Of this system at its start Ur. Von 
Hoist, of Freiburg, has said in his recent review of our 
constitutional and political tistory, " From that hour 
this maxim [to the victors belong the spoils] has 
remained an inviolable principle of American politi- 
cians ; and it is owing only to the astonishing vitality of 
the people of the United States, and to the altogether 
unsurpassed and unsurpassable favor of their natural 
conditions, that the State has not succumbed under the 
onerous burden of the curse." 

It is a hopeful sign that a new public spirit has arisen 
among the young men of the country — many of whom 
are college graduates — who are carrying their inde- 
pendent convictions into civil activities, and are demand- 



25 



ing with an emphasis which partisans are beginning to 
respect, that public life shall be fairly expressive of the 
intelligence, the moral sentiment, and the patriotism 
of the age. 

No subject of national politics requires so much the 
attention of educatecl men to-day as the reconstruction 
of our civil service upon the principles of enlightened 
statesmanship. For the first forty years of our history 
under the Constitution that service depended on per- 
sonal integrity and fitness, and not upon political opin- 
ion. But with President Jackson civil service and par- 
tisan service became synonymous, and so they have 
remained to this day. While in other respects the 
nation has made remarkable advances in methods of 
administration, in this its movement has been retrograde, 
and we have fallen far behind the progress of other 
civilized nations. The civil force is treated as a party 
force to be marshalled in elections, giving a portion of 
its time and of its compensation to keep one party in 
power, although the whole people is taxed to support 
it ; and still more it is now treated as the working force 
of a dominant faction within one party, and of Senators 
who happen to enjoy Executive favor. Members of 
Congress assume as a right to open and shut the doors 
to the public service among their constituents, thus 
usurping the power which the Constitution has con- 
fided only to the President. This unconstitutional pre- 
tension has been maintained in recent times by a 

4 



26 



remarkable innovation called " the courtesy of the Sen- 
ate," according to which a Senator, objecting to a nom- 
ination for a post in his State for no other reason than 
that the nominee is not his man, is joined by Senators 
of his own party from other States, to whom he is 
expected to return like favors ; and thus one branch of 
the government seeks to coerce another to surrender its 
unquestioned prerogative. So gross has this abuse 
become that Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, nominated as Col- 
lector of Customs for the port of New York, — a man 
of eminent character and fitness, beloved for his purity 
of life and noble charities, — was rejected simply be- 
cause a Senator from his State required his rejection ; 
and he received from Senators of his own party, 
according to common report, only the support of six, 
among whom were the Senators from Massachusetts and 
the junior Senator from Rhode Island. The Senator 
who demanded the rejection has been ambitious to dis- 
play contempt for all efforts to put the civil service on 
an honorable footing, reminding us, by his sneers at 
the movement to reform it, of Sir Robert Walpole, who 
in coarse and cynical irony was accustomed to jeer at 
all who objected to the gross parliamentary corruption 
of his time as " patriots, saints, Spartans, boys." 

Thus it has come to pass that the immense force of 
revenue officers, postmasters, marshals, and deputies, 
who are by law and every rational theory of govern- 
ment the servants of the whole public, have become 



27 



the servants of one party, and still more the servants of 
individual partisans. Fifty thousand or more office- 
holders, whose duties do not concern political opinion, 
are subject to dismissal with new administrations and 
new Senators. Witness the natural effect of all this 
on the tone of public life ! On the one hand, the offi- 
cer who ought to be the honorable representative of 
his government and people is degraded to be the sub- 
servient, parasitical agent of a partisan chief; and on 
the other, public men expect to hold their places, not 
by their services and principles, the policies they have 
upheld, the measures they have devised or carried, but 
by their skill in manipulating caucuses and maintaining 
a compact body of political dependents. How, under 
such a system, can self-respect and efficiency and char- 
acter prevail in the civil service ? How under such a 
training can there be honor, wisdom, magnanimity, and 
disinterested patriotism in statesmen 1 

This use of patronage for political purpose once 
existed in England. It was a part of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole's scheme of parliamentary corruption, and flour- 
ished later under Lord North. But the system weak- 
ened with the progress of reform, and at length, as the 
result of a movement beginning in 1853 and culminat- 
ing in 1870, it was displaced by a system of merit and 
competition open to all, — to the sons of tradesmen and 
the sons of noblemen alike. The reform has had in its 
course the efficient support of eminent statesmen of 



28 



both parties as members of the ministry or of parlia- 
mentary commissions, — Aberdeen, Palmerston, Russell, 
Derby, Northcote, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Bright, and 
Lowe. Less than three months ago, in a new election 
which, after a contest exceeding in interest and passion 
our recent Presidential elections, reversed the foreign 
and domestic policy of the empire, of the fifty thou- 
sand persons in the civil service less than fifty, who 
necessarily were to represent the new policy, went out 
with Beaconsfield and came in with Gladstone. 

The colleges of the country — its educated men — 
have it in their power to create a public opinion which 
shall insure the triumph of this reform and compel the 
retirement of public men who stand in its way. This 
is a measure of politics indeed ; but it is also a work of 
patriotism, a movement of civilization. 

In this connection and in this presence, one name 
above all others deserves mention, — that of a graduate 
of Brown University, a native and always a citizen of 
Khode Island, the earliest, ablest, and most persistent 
advocate of civil-service reform in Congress. Without 
the support of party or any active force of public opin- 
ion, he embodied it in a bill and defended it in successive 
reports and speeches. He spoke like a statesman who 
looks far before and far behind him ; and while others 
thought only of local interests and temporary issues, he 
devoted himself with his energy, his intellectual grasp, 
and his positive conviction to this enduring work of 



29 



statesmanship. When history shall record what this 
generation has done for the elevation of American 
politics, it will write in grateful characters the name 
of Thomas Allen Jenckes. 

The political education of the people, in a country 
governed by universal suffrage, will always be the duty 
of those who have had a special opportunity to study 
political subjects. In the recent financial contest in 
this country two facts appeared : First, that there was 
a great want of definite knowledge among the people 
on political and economical questions ; and secondly, 
that everywhere there was a craving for information 
concerning them. Large audiences in agricultural 
and manufacturing districts would listen for hours to 
statements of the elementary laws of political economy, 
accompanied by detailed figures and illustrations. The 
spirit of antagonism to society, which in other coun- 
tries breaks out in Communism and Nihilism, with us 
assumes the form of an attack on the currency. The 
crusade was made at a period of industrial depression, 
and was carried on with an extraordinary zeal, and with 
all the arts known to modern agitation. It became a 
powerful political force, decided elections, carried one 
branch of Congress, and well nigh involved us in finan- 
cial ruin. The delusion was arrested by a combined 
effort which teaches a perpetual lesson. A few earnest 
men in the West organized an " Honest Money League ;" 



30 



they distributed two hundred thousand pamphlets ; 
they addressed the masses not only in populous centres, 
but sought remote villages and the farming populations, 
and in simple and effective statements exposed the mis- 
chievous sophistries Avhich had been industriously 
spread. This movement, and kindred efforts of our 
public men, — notably those of Mr. Schurz and Mr. 
Garfield, — dissipated popular ignorance, and saved this 
nation from one of the worst calamities which ever 
threatened it. The educated man of earnest purpose 
and positive conviction can follow the communist, the 
inflationist, the enemy of social order, wherever he may 
go, confident that the masses will in the end heed the 
teachings of reason and experience. 

Public speaking, — or the platform as it is called, — 
supplies an opportunity for the political education of 
the people in England and the United States, such as is 
found in no other countries. In Germany this mode of 
acting upon public opinion is not yet a habit, although 
it is likely to become such with the progress of the 
republican spirit. In France, where a more liberal 
system is now under consideration, the right to hold a 
public meeting for the discussion of political questions 
is not yet admitted, even by a government founded on 
universal suffrage. Such a meeting can be held only by 
a license from the Prefect of Police, rarely granted 
except during a period of ten days near an election of 
deputies, and it is denied altogether during the three 



31 



days immediately preceding the election. The police 
are conspicuously present, " assisting," as it is called, 
with power to close the session and arrest the speakers 
for language which they may deem offensive to the 
Government or tending to disturb the public peace. 
The English-speaking race submits to no such despotic 
restrictions. It maintains a platform where the speaker 
may say what he likes and the people may listen to 
what they like, — the police being present to protect, 
and not to prevent free speech. In the hour of public 
peril, in seasons when foreign or domestic questions 
press for solution, — whenever statesmen seek to direct 
their countrymen in the way of honor and safety, or 
the people to learn the lessons of wisdom, — you will see 
crowds moved by a common impulse, gathering in the 
open air, under spreading tents, or in town halls, court 
houses, or theatres, where orators and audiences have 
absolute freedom to speak and listen. No English or 
American municipality is deemed complete in its ap- 
pointments which has not its spacious hall for popular 
assemblies, like those of Birmingham and Manchester, 
or those of Boston and Worcester. A people, which 
by right and habit maintains a free platform, needs for 
the maintenance of domestic order no standing army, 
no police espionage. 

Surely one who has had the generous training of 
the College ought, except in rare cases of physical dis- 
ability, to qualify himself for guiding public opinion in 



32 



this mode, which is sanctioned by the customs and tra- 
ditions of the two kindred nations among whom liberty 
and order stand upon the surest foundations. There 
are indeed gifts of voice, manner, person, unction, 
which are born with the man and cannot be acquired, — 
such as have distinguished Whitefield, O'Connell, Kos- 
suth, and Bright; but a genius for oratory is not essen- 
tial to effective public speaking. Cobden did not have 
it, and yet no speaker has done so much in our time to 
change, direct, and concentrate political opinion. His 
style was simple, like conversation, and rejected all the 
glitter of rhetoric ; but he went straight to the under- 
standing, and carried conviction to audiences various in 
tastes and prejudices. 

The style of public speaking in our country is 
changing for the better. Stately periods, studied ges- 
tures, and academic elaboration are less effective than 
formerly, and the sober sense of our time has become, as 
it ought to be, intolerant of turgid rhetoric and certain 
affectations of passion and patriotism which once drew 
rounds of applause ; but the capacity to give to a pop- 
ular assembly well-considered thoughts upon political 
and social themes was never a power so effective for 
good as it is to day. The educated man cannot afford 
to dispense with it, least of all, as some do, to depreci- 
ate it. Of what avail is much of the college curricu- 
lum — the study of rhetoric, and logic, the writing of 
dissertations with infinite labor Umaf, the training in 



33 



elocution, the exercises in declamation, the debates of 
the societies, the parts on exhibition and commence- 
ment days, — if after one has painfully wrought the 
weapons for maintaining truth and assailing error before 
men, he is to lay them aside forever like rusty armor in 
an attic? 

A condition of public speaking in England and the 
United States deserves mention, — and I delight here as 
always to join together two kindred nations who ought 
ever to act as one in movements of civilization, and 
whose common language and spirit are destined to a 
dominion wider and more enduring than those of any 
race. Elsewhere the orator addresses the self-interest, 
the instinct for equality, loyalty, love of glory, nation- 
ality ; but with the English-speaking race the appeal to 
the moral sense has been most effective. So it was 
when this nation broke the fetters of four millions of 
slaves ; and when the English people abolished slavery 
in the AVest Indies, and within a few weeks in the elec- 
tion of a new government declared that their arms and 
diplomacy should no longer be used to uphold Moslem 
barbarism and oppression in eastern Europe, or to wage 
aggressive warfare upon uncivilized races in Africa and 
Asia. 

The scholar must not allow his superior attainments 
to isolate him from common sympathies. If he would 
help men, he must remain of them, and while he directs 

5 



34 



them to " nobler modes of life, sweeter manners, purer 
laws," taking always the best view of their conduct and 
purposes. The satirist may laugh at the follies of a 
degenerate age, but satire never arrested national de- 
cline. He may, like Pascal in the " Provincial Let- 
ters," unmask the hypocrisy of some class or order, 
but his weapon serves no end when aimed at his gen- 
eration. The cynic, with his contempt for mankind, 
will find that mankind has no ear for him. j\Jen will 
accept as guide only him who comes to them with the 
tone and manner of a friend. 

A certain class of scholars in our day and country — 
not a large one, it may be — appear to be pessimists 
in their reflections on public affairs. Their general 
views are excellent, but their cynical tone deprives 
them of the influence which justly belongs to their high 
character and their unquestioned patriotism. They see 
in public life only corruption and low ambition. They 
mourn over the failure of universal suff"rage, instead of 
marking its evils and showing in what better way man- 
kind may be governed. At literary festivals, in journals 
and magazines distinguished by finish of style and 
sharpness of wit, and in poems also, they lament the 
decline of national virtue, and can see nothing but 
Tweeds in politics and Fisks on the exchange. It is 
curious to note — and I trust the observation will not 
ofl"end the sensibilities of any — that those who take 
this depressing view of human nature in our age and 



35 



country are conspicuously those who in religious belief 
cherish the hopeful theory of its development ; while 
those who, following Augustine, treat human life as a 
probation, beginning with depravity and continuing in 
a mortal struggle with foes within and without, never 
seem to fail in courage whether contending with sin at 
home or civilizing savage races abroad. A profound 
religious conviction, narrow or uncultured though it be, 
is never cynical or pessimistic. 

Never in human history, — never, certainly, in the 
history of our country, — has there been a time when it 
would be so irrational to lose faith in man as now. 
Everywhere there is work for the patriot, the scholar, 
and the Christian ; but nowhere does he confront des- 
perate evils. In religion, in politics, in the mainte- 
nance of every-day as well as of heroic virtues there is 
no decline. 

Our age is not a superstitious one ; hardly, in a 
technical sense, a religious one, — that is, in its interest 
in traditional points of controversy. It subordinates 
dogma to conduct ; it mellows the old creeds or gives 
them a liberal construction, — but it is loyal to the sub- 
stance of faith. One may indeed fasten on certain 
aspects of modern thought, — ^-agnosticism, for instance, 
— and lament, as men have always lamented, the decay 
of faith ; but his outlook would be narrow and partial. 
Life, if we compare the Sacred Kecord with our per- 
sonal observation, is purer now than among the be- 



36 



lievers of Rome and Corinth who were converted by the 
direct ministrations of the Apostles. On the platform, 
in public journals and in social life, the Christian belief 
and its ministers were never treated with more genuine 
respect. Even Rationalists and Positivists confess the 
prudential argument for revealed rehgion and its benefi- 
cent power in the civilization and government of man- 
kind. An English writer, who ranks as a Positivist, 
said to me last summer that it was the religious bodies 
which had saved the mining and manufacturing districts 
of England from barbarism. For half a century Mr. 
Emerson has been regarded by many good people as a 
very dangerous teacher, and yet not long ago, as an 
overseer of Harvard College, he gave his voice as well 
as his vote against dispensing with the compulsory 
attendance of students on the morning prayers ; and 
some have thought they discovered in his later utter- 
ances on religion a definite departure from the panthe- 
ism which was ascribed to his earlier productions. 

Our people have in recent history shown in their 
relation as citizens not only the finer and more subtile 
inspirations which rise and subside with heroic periods, 
but also the equally essential though less shining quali- 
ties on which constitutional government depends, — good 
sense, patience, moderation, tolerance of adverse opin- 
ion, the spirit of concession, tact in meeting new 
exigencies where the written law or precedents fail, 
and sobriety in the midst of circumstances which 



37 



move the depths of popular passion. The surrender 
of Mason and . Slidell ; the maintenance of peace with 
France when Louis Napoleon was scheming for inter- 
vention in our civil war (from which we were saved by 
the refusal of the British Cabinet), and was sending 
troops to Mexico to extend the dominion of the Latin 
race on this continent ; the maintenance of peace with 
England when "Alabamas," built in her dockyards and 
issuing from her ports, were sweeping our commerce 
from the ocean, — these are signal instances of national 
self-control. What nation could more peacefully and 
fairly have settled the disputed succession to a throne 
than we settled the Presidential controversy of 1876 by 
its submission to a new tribunal of fifteen men in an 
emergency for which the Constitution had made no pro- 
vision, — the award made by one majority, and one mem- 
ber afterwards stating that the case appeared so bal- 
anced that he first wrote opinions on both sides in order 
the better to present the opposite views to his own 
mind^ And yet forty-five millions of people, without 
disturbance, without the resistance of a single citizen, 
without the arming of a single soldier, accepted as law 
and government a judgment rendered on so narrow an 
issue by the casting vote of one hesitating man ! 

We have lifted four millions of slaves to manhood 
and. citizenship, men of another color and another race, 
— an achievement for which Tocqueville, abolitionist 
though he was, did not dare to hope ; and we have 



38 



done it with less personal violence, less disturbance of 
industry, less friction of social forces than the most 
sanguine patriot imagined was possible. More recently 
a destructive theory of finance seemed to overcome the 
popular imagination, but we have seen the fanaticism 
arrested by appeals to sober reason. 

And when heroic qualities have been needed, has 
this people been found wanting? In 1861 we appeared 
to foreign observers, even to many of ourselves, to be 
given up to materialism, — loving comfort, greedy of 
wealth, feeble in national spirit, lacking in personal 
courage, without faith in ourselves and our country ; 
and foreign statesmen, even the best of them, with few 
exceptions, believed our dissolution was at hand. But 
when our people faced the dread questions, whether 
the country of Washington should be severed in twain, 
whether the Mississippi should flow through divided 
empires, whether slavery should be perpetual on this 
continent, whether the hope of the nations should be 
darkened, there rose a spirit from east to west, — from 
farm, work-shop, factory, college, — a spirit of self-sac- 
rifice, patriotism, nationality, and devotion to liberty, 
which has won the admiration of mankind, and will 
move the souls of distant posterity as the stories of 
Leonidas, savior of Greece, and of William of Orange, 
savior of Holland, have swayed the departed genera- 
tions. 

Let us, then, my brethren, have faith in the suffrage 



39 



of the people, though it does not elect us ; in our coun- 
try, though another party than our own should succeed ; 
in religion, though our particular sect dwindles ; in the 
human race, though it does not -always behave as we 
would have it. 

And now a final word to the young men who to- 
morrow are to receive their commissions from the Uni- 
versity. You meet at the threshold of your career a 
period of great interest and activity, and with the open- 
ing of the twentieth century you will be in all the 
prime of manly power. There will be in your day, as 
in all days, ignorance to be overcome, delusions to be 
dispelled, low ambition to be withstood, noble causes to 
be advanced. Here then is your opportunity ; here 
also is your duty. Carry into the State and into the 
Church the liberal spirit of the College ; hold fast to 
the independent conviction which is born of your train- 
ing ; maintain your individuality against combined 
masses, your right of private judgment against all 
aggressive force ; keep your heart w^arm and healthy 
by contact with the people ; have faith in the best 
instincts of living men and in the highest possibilities 
of your race. If the world's best things come to you, 
use them with moderation ; but if fame and fortune 
leave \ou uncrowned, you will deserve well of Alma 
Mater if you live brave, honest, simple lives, and all 
the ends you aim at be your country's, your God's, 
and truth's. 



POEM. 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



O mystery of human life ! 

O wondrous end of man ! 
O theme with curious questions rife, 

With God's divinest plan, — 
Plan, which no human mind can reach, 

No human tongue can tell ; 
Too deep for angel's thought or speech, 

Boundless, ineffable! 

How doth the acorn, germinant, 

Become the mighty tree ; 
How grows the infant spark of thought 

Broader than land and sea ! 
The mighty oak its crumbling boughs 

Back to earth's bosom gives ; 
But ages come, and ages pass,— 

Mind, still expanding, lives. 

How man, with ever-longing soul, 

Some fancied goal desires- 
Like toiling miners, sinking shafts 
Deep towards earth's central fires — 



42 



But leaves, unsought, life's highest good, 

As bats ignore the sun — 
And, grasping for the weali, the mean, 

Misses the grand, the one. 

Life scorns to yield its noblest fruit 

To men of aimless ease; 
No coral reef springs up, uncaused, 

Above the deep, blue seas ; 
Work with thy might, O mortal man, 

With worthy ends in view; 
With soul and nerve, with heart and brain. 

To God's high model true. 

All wealth of faithful work is born. 
All greatness won by toil. 

E'en as the farmer's golden corn 
Springs from the deep-worked soil ; 

Spoil not thy soul with nerveless aim, 
With idle, weak desire; 

Strive nobly for a noble name- 
To all high deeds aspire. 

As from the crucible the gold. 

Tried by the fierce flame, flows — 
As from the sculptor's dust and grime 

The chiselled wonder grows — 
So from earth's friction, toil and grief. 

Bring beauty, love and truth, — 
Garments of praise for ripened days. 

The light and crown of youth. 

On wealth intent, in wild pursuit. 

O'er distant climes and isles, 
The merchant drives, with eager haste, 

And heap on heap he piles ; 



43 

Like sand-hills on the wave-washed shore. 
Like clouds of drifting spray, 

Like moie-hills in the ploughman's path, 
His treasures melt away. 

Ambition mounts his fiery steeds, 

Plumed, o'er new heights to soar; 
And waves aloft his potent wand, 

O'er subject sea and shoi'e; 
Nurse thy fair bubble, man of pride — 

Thyself, thy mighty care; 
Reach forth for other worlds to rule; 

And grasp — but empty air. 

The athlete struggles in the race, 

The expected crown — his life — 
Muscle and bone, and wrenching nerve 

Tense with the mighty strife ; 
O bootless task, such wreath to win, 

Triumph, alas, how briefl 
His valor, nought but force of limb, 

His crown — a fading leaf I 

Proud of the flag that o'er him waves. 

Of deeds his bravery wrought, 
Of rights secnred, of wrongs redi'est. 

Of battles grandly fought — 
The warrior, with his sword unsheathed. 

Cries "Victory! or death!" 
How soon his vaunted glory pales — 

Brief as a passing breath. 

Scorched on the line, chilled at the pole, 

Tossed on the billowy foam, 
Ambition lures the explorer on. 

With tireless zeal to roam ; 



44 

Perchance he finds nor sea, nor land, 

But faith still onward leads — 
The fame, the wealth, the rest he seeks. 

False to his hope, recedes. 

The gold that gilds the sunset cloud 

Fades with the parting day ; 
The silver shimmer on the sea 

At nightfall melts away ; 
And vain man's mortal hopes and aims. 

So bright; but soon so dim, 
Die, like the flashing lightning's gleams. 

Above the horizon's rim. 

New heights, new depths, of wealth unknown," 

Wait the behest of thought ; 
As mines in countries unexplored. 

Wait to be found and wrought ; 
The high, the grand, the true, the good. 

These are man's fitting goal, — 
God's jewels, — ore of priceless worth — 

The ingots of the soul. 

Then winnow grains of truth and love 

From this world's useless straw ; 
Who rules his life, he rules the end — 

'Tis nature's changeless law ; 
O blest the man, supremely blest, 

Whose life sublimely fiovvs ; 
For God's approving sentence sheds 

A halo o'er its close. 

O man, in God's own image made — 

Born of God's highest thought, 
O man, for nobler aims designed. 

For nobler purpose wrought, — 



45 

Build uot on time's illusive sands 

The pillar of thy fame; 
But high, on monuments unseen, 

Carve an immortal name. 

What harvest fields of joy and hope 

Whiten the world's broad face; 
A sickle waits each willing hand, 

Each heart, God's helping grace ; 
No seed is lost, — no precious grain 

To earth can, useless, fall : 
God guards the reapers and the seed, 

His love shall garner all. 



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